Sandy Lee

In many ways the Member’s question about Smith and Hay River is related to the work that we are doing in Stanton. Going forward what we need to do not only in programming but especially in the capital plan that’s before us, is that we need to have a system-wide plan and work on facilities, because facilities are built to support the services. What we need to do is make sure that Stanton becomes a true territorial hospital; a true acute care, tertiary, the only acute care facility. Inuvik will be the secondary, second level, high-level care facility. Sort of the hub-and-spoke model is the...

The Member is right; the accounts receivable is one of the factors, but it’s not the biggest or the largest cost driver. I’m pleased to advise the House that it’s this government and this Minister that has signed an agreement. We have now a written agreement with the Nunavut government. We negotiated for two years and we signed in February of 2010. Most of the receivables we have with Nunavut are current. We have an outstanding amount with respect to Nunavut residents we have in extended care, because there were no real written agreements for the last 10 years. So we have finalized that, we...

Yes, I don’t think we have the exact numbers of nursing positions there, but we could get back to the Member on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are doing some work in Fort Simpson to do “upgrades.” We are also in the books for doing future studies on Simpson Health Centre. Ms. Meade has more information on other work being done in that region.

I thought I answered the question on the long-term care facility. It’s a GNWT facility. We’re going to build it. Health and Social Services will own it. It will be a GNWT asset. We’ll provide O and M for it. Tlicho Community Services Agency doesn’t have anything to do with it.

The reason I wanted to follow up is that I know we have some lease arrangement on the health centre for a part of it. I don’t know if it’s the office or what, because we’ve done some renovations there. They’re not related. That’s not related to this project. This is a GNWT facility.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The projected deficit for Stanton at the end of 2011 is $10,185,663 and the system-wide deficit projected for 2011 is $16,860,299. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The part of planning study would have included the programs that would be offered in these facilities and planning on what the staffing makeup would be. I’d ask the DM to give more information on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The planning study money is for this fiscal year and at the end of that we should have a detailed plan on the need and the functional programming and the total dollar amount for Stanton. So I can’t say it’s going to be in the books next year, but it will be working through the process.

The B-C health centre has to be in the community so that we have access to physicians.

I do appreciate what the Member is saying. The jobs or the positions or the people that are in our communities do serve in two different areas. Economically those are jobs and they have those jobs and those are important to them. Then in terms of care, it is so much more preferable for our people to be taken care of on our own. So I agree with the Member that there is room in our health care system, health and wellness, where we train and we have people in communities to take care of those who need assistance. Largely those are usually elders or they could be people with chronic conditions...